Nook HD+ Has Been Rooted (Video)

Barnes & Noble's new Nook gadgets have been out for nearly 2 weeks now and it has only just today been rooted.

XDA member and veteran Android hacker verygreen posted instructions and a proof of concept video this morning.

His method requires a small amount of typing and does not look all that difficult for the average user. This particular trick is probably not going to be of much use. It's dependent on a mistake made by the software developers working on the Nook HD.

I don't see that there has been much mention of this in the blogs, but the Nook HD+ (and probably the HD as well) was released to consumers with several developer setting still visible. Of particular use is the ability to enable ADB. This setting is the first step towards rooting and hacking an Android device because it lets you plug the device into a USB cable and access the device from the computer at the other end of the cable.

I expect B&N to remove this option with the next update (2.0.3), but until they do so hackers will be gratefully taking advantage of this handy shortcut. I expect it to speed up the development of a hack which installs Google Play and other Google apps.

Update: I have just learned that this hack is not repeatable. According to an update over on XDA Forums, several users have reported going into a reboot loop and having the HD+ do a factory reset after the 8th loop.

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."

10 Comments on Nook HD+ Has Been Rooted (Video)

You think this is a mistake. I say it’s deliberate to drive sales. Knowing it can be rooted this easily will make people go buy it. Whether they close that in an update or not is irrelevant. They will have made their money, the haXXorz will have it, and the rooting battle will continue. Everyone wins.

There is a logic to offering the adb option *and* locking the device to sideloading by default. Namely that hackers are few and far between and making it easy for *them* to unlock the device doesn’t necessarily mean all buyers will know how to emulate them. Or even want to. Plus the Nook store is pretty thin so they need to reach out to developers… The smarter move would be to allow sideloading as a user option but let’s face it: the name may now be Nook Media but the mindset is still B&N…

B&N has upped the ante. It looks like that hole was a mistake after all that they closed with a fast update that now prevents rooting. I have faith XDA will break down this new wall too. Have they ever been defeated?